As he tried to jump-start his flagging campaign earlier this week, John
McCain uttered a new rallying cry: "We've got them just where we want
them." But even his die-hard supporters had to question that assessment.
According to countless public polls, McCain's campaign has been losing,
not gaining ground. No candidate wants to be down about seven points
nationwide with no clear momentum and less than three weeks to go.

The numbers are likely to shift before Election Day as voters are forced
to make their final commitments. And McCain still has a shot at victory,
if the Bush states that have swung away from him in recent weeks, like
Florida, Virginia and Ohio, swing back. But it is an uphill climb,
and it beings up the question, Why is he so far behind this late in the game?

Without a doubt the two main factors are the financial crisis and the
presidential debates. When Lehman Brothers collapsed on Sept. 14,
McCain still led the national polls by about two points. For McCain, the
subsequent fallout proved to be a triple whammy, reminding voters about
the benefits of government regulation (a traditionally Democratic
argument), highlighting the failure of leadership of the current White
House and accelerating the nation's collective sense that it has been
heading in the wrong direction.

The debates, for their part, largely acquitted Obama of the biggest
question mark against him: Does he demonstrate presidential mettle?
McCain's performance varied, with high points and low points, but no
matter what he did on the debate stage, he never forced Obama to lose his bearings. After each
contest, polls showed that independent voters clearly decided that Obama
came off as neither scary nor an amateur. In most polls, swing voters
said Obama won all three debates, by margins as large as 2 to 1.

There was, of course, nothing McCain could do to prevent the financial
crisis, or even much, most observers say, he could do to blunt Obama's
strong debate performance. But that doesn't mean the Republican nominee didn't
exacerbate those and other situations this fall. Four decisions the
campaign made over the past two months in particular have heavily
contributed to its current woes.